


Better for the Toil

by JoifulDreaming



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:20:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24537619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoifulDreaming/pseuds/JoifulDreaming
Summary: Crowley's reflections as he proposes
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	Better for the Toil

The tattered blanket is laid out under a young apple tree. It’s still too young to bear proper fruit, even if Crowley could will it so. He won’t: there’s time for all things now and the toil of it brings a restful feeling to his very bones. The toil of it, that’s something that the humans and even his angel figured out before he did. Why toil when you could have? Why scour the world for a single book when you could summon the words? Why carefully cultivate a garden, when you could force it to your will? There’s nothing they can’t believe they should have in this world that they can’t have on the very basis of that belief.

Crowley’s life, both before and after the fall had been a force of will: willing stars to form in his palms and placing them in the heavens. Willing questions into being and pouring them out only to be dropped by Her will. Willing humans toward temptation and letting them do the rest. Even his own atrium was a place where living things bent their will around his, to do as he pleased. If they did not comply, they were removed.

But, work and toil and reward... those were things he was only understanding now. Long days in the sun and the rain, planting and weeding and fertilizing and hoping. Triumph and disappointment. Long nights reading books and articles and learning. No longer bending things to his will, but asking those things to follow him; to stay and grow with him. 

It wasn’t just about the plants. His angel was settling himself on the blanket in front of him now, the dappled sunlight filtering through the gently breeze-blown leaves making patches of his hair glint and glimmer; his eyes, too, as they squint into a soft smile. The smile quirks as his shining eyes shift to the picnic basket by Crowley’s left hip. More learning and toil, but of a joyful kind: he’s figured out that what the angel so loves about the human food is the artistry and the work that goes into it. A simple scone or an eight course meal; it takes knowledge and planning and desire to bring it about. The same substances can be created in an instance with the snapping of fingers, but the process is lost- the desire is no longer tangible. Style, yes. Substance, no. You can not taste the love of the thing if there is no strain in it’s conception.

Crowley opens the basket and hands teacups and a thermos to Aziraphale- leaves grown in their garden- as he lays out plates of meaty hand pies and mini desserts. They share the quiet of midday, watching small birds flit in and out of the tree above them carrying bits of twigs and moss; somewhere above them the birds are nesting, building something for a family.

Crowley thinks, too, as he watches the sun-dappled angel enjoy the rewards of his toil, tasting the patience he’s acquired to form pastry, cook tender meats, and wait for leaves to dry... That the two of them together are more work and toil and patience than creation or will. Will would have had them tangled together on a wall that surrounded paradise, but that was just a start, a leaning towards the same sun. Will had nothing to do with the accidental meetings over time, that was all learning the steps to their dance- to who the other was, to who they were themselves. Will had nothing to do with the missteps and misunderstandings along the way, those were weeds fighting for the same space- to pull them apart. If will had anything to do with them then, it was to part them. But still, they leaned toward that same sun; together, winding around one another a vine or leaf at a time.

It wasn’t will but common goal- toil and substance in shared work- symbiosis and efficiency. I will do the work of two for your rest and you will do the work of two for mine. Neither could force the other and neither could do both without their combined communication and desire.

When common goals had given way to understanding and understanding had given way to want, that much was murky. It wasn’t will or miracle, either, more like something warm and bubbling beneath the surface, unseen until the proper time. Something revealed in the saving of books at literal pains and backrooms open long into the night: the work of opening, blooming into new things.

It’s a home purposefully built together: the combination of style and comfort, compromise and concession. The physical as twisted and entwined as the metaphor: heated and tested and weathered until only one thing stands where there was two.

He waits until the shadows are longer and drawn out across them and the grass and the crumbs of their shared meal. Until a head of downy curls is resting in his lap, eyes half shuttered in rest. He doesn’t wait to draw things out or out of nervous fears and doubts. He waits for the quietest moment of the day, the stillness, to pull the last thing from the basket: a small wooden box, hand carved. He hands it over and combs back the soft curls with his fingers as his angel opens it to reveal a delicate pair of rings, hand carved with tangles of vines: no discernible beginning or end to them. Later he will put words to this for him, but for now he doesn’t want to break the quiet and, it seems, he’s not alone in that. 

Aziraphale holds the rings up to the light, turning them this way and that so the setting sunlight catches in all the tiny grooves. He smiles up at him and beckons for his hand. They hold their hands up, side-by-side against the leaves above them, admiring the fit of the rings. Fingers entwine to bring them closer, as they should be: a symbol of purpose and will, but more the reflection of all the work and toil that’s come before... and the desire to grow together from here.


End file.
